All you need to know about Digital India programme: Explained

In an order to create participative, transparent and responsive government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the much ambitious 'Digital India' programme on Wednesday, July 1, at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in the national capital.

Top industrialists like RIL Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani, Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry, Wipro Chairman Azim Premji and many others, were among the business honchos who shared their ideas of taking digital revolution to the masses. [Digital India Week Launched: As It Happened]

Digital India

Several events were held across 36 states and union territories, covering 600 districts in the country.

Information Technology companies were told to organise a mandatory viewing of the speech to be delivered by PM Narendra Modi at the launch of the Digital India Initiative.

What is Digital India?

With the launch of Digital India programme, the government is taking a big step forward to transform the country into a digitally empowered knowledge economy.

Includes various schemes worth over Rs 1 lakh crore like Digital Locker, e-eduction, e-health, e-sign and national scholarship portal.

BharatNet in 11 states and Next Generation Network (NGN), are also a part of Digital India campaign.

The programme includes projects that aim to ensure that government services are available to citizens electronically and people get benefit of the latest information and communication technology.

The Ministry of Communications and IT is the nodal agency to implement the programme.

Digital Locker will reduce the administrative overhead of government departments and agencies created due to paper work.

It will also make it easy for the residents to receive services by saving time and effort as their documents will now be available anytime, anywhere and can be shared electronically.

To sign-up for your Digital Locker, one needs an Aadhaar card and a Mobile number that is linked to that Aadhaar card Number.

What is National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN)?

NOFN proposes seven lakh kilometers of optical fibre to be laid to connect 250 gram panchayats in three years.

Public Wi-fi spots will be provided around the clusters after that and all villages will be provided with internet connectivity.

According to Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, "ten states including Maharashtra, Madhya Prasad, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Haryana and Chhattisgarh, are ready to roll out the NOFN to facilitate Digital India.

Prasad, early this year, had described Digital India initiative as, "India would become a very powerful digitally connected world. This would lead to a good architecture for electronic delivery of service. The entire contour of India is change. India is sitting at the cusp of a big digital revolution."

States like Telangana, Meghalaya, Jharkhand also observed Digital India Week (DIW) from July 1 to July 7.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) also directed all varsities and higher education institutes across the country to observe the Digital India Week.